Printing & Publishing of Music

A Short History & How it is Done

For nearly five years now we at Parlor Songs have brought you hundreds of covers
and scores of American popular songs from the 1700's to the mid 20th century.
We have seen the evolution of music and the artwork that accompanies these wonderful
musical treasures from the past. With those songs we have also been witness to
the process of publication of music and the covers. We have seen music evolve
from sometimes simple engravings, woodcut prints to complex five color lithography.
Though the history of the printed word is relatively commonly known, the history
of printed music is less known. Of course, there are parallels that are shared
by both printed text and music, there are also additional complexities that accompany
the publication of music that make for a challenge in the printing industry that
text printing does not present. Consider this; to print text (only), the producer
must be prepared to have "type" set for 26 letters of the alphabet (with
caps), numbers, italics and numerous punctuators. At best somewhere around 100
- 200 characters to be used. Of course, that excludes various type faces which
are optional. The printing of music uses more complex symbols and many more of
them. In the 19th century, the printer V.J. Figgins of London had already catalogued
460 separate symbols and elements, most of which are variable. The variability
comes with, for example the length of a "hairpin" a trill or other performance
and technique symbols. Just like text, different type faces and sizes can create
an incredibly complex inventory of symbols to be used. Of course, this all pales
in comparison to the printing symbols required for some Asian languages, but that
is another story best left to someone in Asia to tell. It is not our intent here
to tell the entire story of music publishing, that would probably take an entire
book, or more. Rather, we want to provide you with an overview of the significant
developments that culminated in the incredibly rich and clear covers and scores
of American popular music during its golden years from around 1890 - 1920.

For perspective, we need to go back to before the printing press, to the times
when music notation was ill defined and when committing a work to paper meant
manual scribing of the
notes and hand decoration of the score. Illuminated (decorated, illustrated)
manuscripts were commonly seen in 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. Often attributed
to monastic scriptoriums, texts were carefully hand drawn and laboriously scribed.
This page from a gradual, published in 1312 is an example of a work done by
hand. Certainly, this process resulted in fantastically beautiful results but
it was definitely impractical for mass production and circulation. In most cases
however, music was "published" as a part of the oral history and passed
on by priests or performers. In other words, it was not published but simply
remembered and passed on from church to church or performer to performer. By
the late 15th century, printing became the most common way of producing literature
and educational texts but music continued to be circulated through hand written
manuscripts. Part of this related to the fact that no clear and uniform notation
systems evolved until much later, but the main obstacle was the complexity of
printing music and the need for technical solutions that had not yet been found.
Interestingly, though technical solutions emerged over the centuries, some of
the most prominent music publishers in Europe such as Foucault in France and
Brietkopf in Leipzig were still preparing manuscripts manually as late as the
start of the 19th century.. According to the New Grove (see our resources
page for a complete bibliography for this and all articles on our site),
the first music in a printed volume appeared in the Codex spalmorum,
in 1457. Interestingly, the text was printed leaving space for the music which
was then added manually in manuscript form in each copy!

By 1473, it seems some technical problems were overcome and the first fully
printed music appeared in the Constance Gradual printed probably in 1473
in Germany. In 1476 Ulrich Hahn printed the Missale secundum consuetudinem
curie romane, and claimed to be the first to print music. Hahn's methods
were copied and soon missals and graduals were sprouting up all over Europe
and later by 1500, in England. The technical breakthrough? Woodcut printing.
This method, a distant relative and precursor of lithography allowed printers
to create complex images such as music which required variable
spatial placement of images and symbols. A woodcut is simply a carved block
of wood where the characters to be printed are left higher than the surrounding
wood. Though simple in concept, the skills required for a quality woodcut are
not to be assumed to be simple. It requires an artist's skills, and the ability
to imagine everything backwards as the block must be a mirror image of the printed
page. The examples shown at right are from 1487 and 1516. That on the right
shows a very high level of artistic accomplishment as the woodcutter has included
a quite detailed illustration.

As the text printing industry progressed, so too did music printing. The next
major step was the use of moveable type. Of course we know that the completion
of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 using moveable type ( it took three years to
complete printing of 200 copies!) marked the turning point in making printing
of text a commercially viable process. The use of moveable type for printing
music however yielded less that satisfactory results in the early years and
at least in the US, freehand music engraving (see below) was favored from around
1698 till the late 1700's. European
printers on the other hand, spent significant time and energy in the refinement
of music typesetting such that by the late 1700's American printers were able
to import excellent font sets from the Caslon foundry in London. Brietkopf in
Germany also developed a very smooth and detailed type system in 1754 that resulted
in high quality printed scores. The difficulties of integrating note and other
forms with the staff lines, often resulted in a two or three part printing process.
The sheet would first be printed with the staff lines, then a second pass would
add the notes and other notation. Of course this required near perfect alignment
on each pass and sometimes, multi-pass printed music came out looking rather
odd. By the 19th century, type systems reached their maximum complexity through
a method called "mosaic" type. Expensive and complex, it took a great
deal of effort to refine the mosaic system but even though several resulted
in satisfactory results, it was Brietkopf's mosaic system that ultimately became
the standard. Of course, type was completely useless for creating the beautiful
covers for sheet music, for that we have to turn to engraving and lithography.

Engraving
is nothing more than the further development of the woodcut process where the
images to be printed are cut from or impressed on some matrix, usually copper
plates. Requiring great care and artistic ability, engraving allowed for the
addition of decoration and of course sheet music covers. The process of engraving
has changed little over the centuries. The basic process for music involves
cutting the staff lines onto the plate then either freehand cutting of the images
or use of punches for note heads and other standard image elements. A very exacting
process requiring great skill and a steady hand, engraving can produce images
of extremely high quality and detail. Take for example the detail on bank notes
or stock certificates, they are produced using the engraving process. I can
only imagine the skill and nerve required. Image spending hours on a detailed
engraving and then having an errant sneeze or friendly slap on the back ruin
your work!

The engraving process is what allowed the music business to package the music
in a way that would attract the buyer and sell music. Though sheet music has
always been a showcase for incredible artistic talent, the bottom line is that
the cover is there to sell the product. As such, sheet music and particularly
popular music, began to display engraved covers that were artistic and interesting.
We have seen many examples of mid to late 19th century engraved covers on ParlorSongs,
especially in our January, 2000 issue on the "Dead
Zone" of American music. Visit that issue
to see a number of engraved sheet music covers such as the detailed cover of
the Innocence March from 1877. Though engraving could certainly produce
excellent and detailed images, something more was needed to produce multicolorcover
images. Though in many cases, during the 19th century engraved prints were often
colored by hand painting certain details (an example from our collection is
the Leslie Polka from 1864, shown in more detail in our essay
on collecting sheet music. The breakthrough needed was lithography, first
used to print music in 1796 and refined through photolithography into the mid
and later 19th century.

Lithography is literally the use of stone ( lith ). The Oxford English dictionary
defines it as:

"the art or process of making a drawing, design or writing
on a special kind of stone so that impressions in ink can be taken from it."

The practice is based on the principle that one greasy substance will receive
another but that any greasy substance will repel water. The inventor of lithography
was Alois Senefelder. Aspiring to be a playwright, he could not afford to publish
through the commercial trade and as a consequence, took up the study of printing
methods. He concluded that copper plate etching was the most promising technique
but for some reason began experimenting with a piece of limestone. He found
that he could produce a more distinct image on the limestone. He used his own
inks made from wax, soap and lampblack and hit upon the idea of etching the
stone with nitric acid. After trying the acid,
he found that it left a nicely elevated image perfect for printing. Having seen
a poorly printed music in a prayer book, Senefelder thought that his process
might be valuable in printing music. A friend, Franz Gleissner was a composer
and Senefelder experimented with printing Gleissner's works. The first lithograph
of music was Gleissner's Feldmarsch der Churpfalzbayer Truppen in 1796.
The photo at right is of one of Senefelder's original stones used to print some
of Gleissner's music.

Eventually, workers fully understood the chemical nature of the process. Designs
were drawn or painted with greasy inks onto a special kind of water-absorbing
limestone. The non-image areas were treated with gum arabic and well moistened
with water, after which ink was applied with a roller. The oily ink adhered
only to the greasy image area and was repelled by the water-saturated non-image
area. The image was then printed with a special press in which a scraper bar
was drawn across a sheet of paper laid over the inked-up stone. Lithographic
stones were heavy, cumbersome, difficult to align (the differing colors had
to be printed one at a time over the previous image), and liable to breakage.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, color lithography - or chromolithography,
as it came to be known - was the process of choice for a number of ambitious
projects. For example, between 1851 and 1853 in London, a massive publication
was underway, namely, Digby Wyatt's The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth
Century at the Great Exhibition. It contained 160 illustrations printed
by chromolithography, and each one used at least seven colors. According to
the preface, 1,300 copies were printed at a rate of about 18,000 impressions
per week, for a total of 1,350,500 impressions in all. After each impression,
or "pull," the lithographic stone had to be cleaned and the register
reestablished for the next sheet. 1,069 stones were required, together weighing
25 tons. The paper alone weighed 17,400 pounds. "With 1,069 stones,"
said the color printing historian Courtney Lewis, "the place must have
looked like a dismantled cemetery." No wonder, as then practiced, chromolithography
waned." But not for a long while. Over the next forty years, chromolithography
steadily outpaced its rivals until, one day, it too was replaced. At its height,
however, and in the proper hands, the process was capable of exquisite results.

Though lithography had at last produced sharp images, it was the combination
of the newly emerging technology of photography combined with lithography that
allowed lithography to become the standard for producing high quality and multi
colored prints in mass quantity. Rather than having to hand scribe a plate or
stone a photo could be taken of a drawn image and converted to light sensitized
stone. Experimentation for photo lithography began as early as 1839 and by 1860,
the process had been perfected with use of zinc plates rather than rocks as
the medium. Zinc was cheaper and lighter than limestone and could be curved
around a cylinder, if necessary.

When producing cover art, the original painting or image is separated into
either a three color "RGB" (Red, Green, Blue) set of plates or a four
color "CMYK" (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, & Black). Higher quality,
vivid prints such as those on E.T. Paull works were often five color or even
seven color separations. Of course, many covers used only twocolors
or three colors (RGB) such as the one at the right from 1930 and some, like
the E.T. Paull covers featured in our July, 2001 feature, used five or even
seven color separations. Obviously, the more separations, the more expensive
the cover. The separate plates are inked with the appropriate color and each
image is printed over the other till the all the colors combine to make the
final image. This process does require accuracy, the plates all must be carefully
aligned, otherwise the image becomes blurred and messy. I'm sure we have all
seen the occasional newspaper ad where the image looks like a bad 3-D movie
without the glasses; that is the result of litho plates being out of register.
Usually, the bad ones are rejected but sometimes they get into circulation and
we have a few in our collection.

Of course not all sheet music covers use multi color lithography, lower priced,
mass produced sheet covers were often published using simple typeset title covers.
Covers
such as this Victor Herbert work from 1915 abound and though they are not as
valuable as the more vividly illustrated covers we usually feature, they did
serve the purpose of getting popular music distributed at a more affordable
price.

Interestingly, as photo chromolithography improved and was refined into the
twentieth century, the quality of sheet music covers declined. Covers began
to retreat to earlier simpler covers and artwork, in most cases, became less
important. I am sure much of this had to do with costs and profitability. After
all, why pay an artist to complete a beautiful cover when a simple photo and
typeset title will do? As the century progressed, the age of beautiful covers
faded away. Though there are still many avid collectors of the covers from the
40's, 50's and 60's, we still find our greatest interest and fascination with
the covers from the earlier years when art ruled the sheet music cover and printing
technology was used to create vivid and striking covers that sold the music
and in some respects, outperformed much of it.

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